Get out the calculators. 3 completely new,
previously unissued songs; 5 songs from The
Gray Race (1996); 2 songs from Stranger
Than Fiction (1994); 4 songs from Recipe
For Hate (1993); 3 songs from Generator
(1992); 2 songs from Against The Grain
(1990); 3 songs from No Control
(1989); 2 songs from Suffer (1988);
1 song from Back To The Known
(1984); 2 songs from How Could Hell Be
Any Worse (1982). Boy, do these guys have a large disco­graphy — and boy,
do they love to love it. All except Into
The Unknown, that is, which is im­portant, because it is the only clue we
have here that Greg Graffin can
actually accept a few mis­takes (or at least one mistake) in his life.

If there could ever be a point in a Bad Religion
live album, then Graffin and Co. make everything in their power to avoid it.
First, a real good live punk rock show should last about the same as a real
good punk rock album — no more than half an hour at best; Tested spills over an hour-long vessel, and listening to Bad
Religion for more than sixty minutes is only recommendable for real strong guys
with lots of frustration to vent,
more than I could ever imagine (and I'm feeling pretty pissed off right now
myself). Second, even in punk rock, it does help if you try and make your
material a little bit different from
the studio originals — even if you just speed it up a bit, like the Ramones —
and this might be the main reason why punk bands do not frequently bother with
live recordings, since most of them already have a live-in-the-studio sound.

Third and most important, Graffin chose a very
strange approach here: instead of doing like eve­ry­body else and «miking the
stage», he simply directed all the instruments straight into the recor­ding
console. This allowed the sound to be captured as faithfully and cleanly as
possible, and the reasonable point to be lost completely. The new, crazy point
is to answer the question: «How fuckin' good — technically — are Bad Religion
when they go onstage and play their material?» The normal answer to that question, in a logical world, would be: «Who
fuckin' cares?» Only a band with a very
puffed up sense of self-importance would demand a different one.

In addition, the actual recordings were all
taken from different shows and selected with great care out of a pile of
look-alikes — you'd think it was Glenn Gould here sorting through the tapes,
not the leader of a generic hardcore outfit regularly operating at a
three-chord level. With no conti­nuity whatsoever to the proceedings, they
don't even formally qualify as a «live punk rock show». What's the actual
sense, then? Just try to assert your intellectual superiority over all
competition by «doing something different»? How about some humility here? Would
be nice for a band whose workbag of musical ideas is kinda skinny, to put it
mildly.

Not that the whole thing is utterly bland,
uninspired, disgusting, or anything. The song selection is all right — at this
point, it is fairly difficult even to remember what were the «highlights» and
the «lowlights» on the band's original albums anyway — and of the new songs,
only the super-slow, ultra-pathetic ʽDream Of Unityʼ goes over the top in an
adequacy-defying manner. As a general retrospective, it isn't too bad (although
one wonders why they didn't arrange the songs in chronological order, if they are
fading out after each track anyway). But high up above the simple «like it or
hate it» level, most live albums set out to prove a purpose — and Tested seems to prove all the wrong
ones. Thumbs
down, simply because I doubt I'll ever listen to it again. In fact,
I have similar doubts about plenty of other BR albums, but if there is anything
in particular that the title of Tested
refers to — it's patience, yours and mine. In any case, buying the album won't
solve the world's problems, as Graffin would have you do. You might just as
well donate your money to a financial pyramid.

Although, at their peak (and they were almost
always at their peak, considering they only lasted three years), Baker Gurvitz
Army were a real swell live act, somehow they never got around to putting out a
live album — probably because there was little hope of commercial success,
given the failure of the studio ones (too bad they never got inspired by the
example of KISS). The vaults did open, eventually, in the 2000s, with a whole
stream of low-budget, but sometimes sur­prisingly high-quality releases, the
most representative of which is this show, recorded for a live BBC broadcast
(hence the quality) during the Elysian
Encounter tour.

In the true spirit of progressive ambition, the
setlist barely fits onto a single CD with only twelve numbers — but, in all
honesty, the seventy eight minutes never feel tedious. These are just long
songs, sometimes launching into jam mode for brief periods (this ain't Cream,
really), sometimes giving the guitarist or the drummer an individual chance to
shine (only one, and a relatively brief at that, drum solo — probably at the
BBC's cordial request), but most often fixed in a steady groove mode, just
getting it on, with the Gurvitz brothers providing the hard rock excitement, Ginger
adding a jazz foundation, and the keyboard guy laying on the funk 'n' fusion.
Although, honestly, to hell with the keyboard guy — his presence is notable,
but as a keyboard guy, he is the weakest link in this chain.

The setlist is predictably concentrated on Elysian Encounter, with a couple of
numbers from the debut album, a «preview» of ʽNeon Lightsʼ from Hearts On Fire, and a 7"-only song
(ʽSpace Machineʼ, "our last single that vanished without a trace",
Mr. Snips says) to hold up some balance — as well as two Cream classics (guess
which ones) donated specially for Ginger fans, and a late period Jimi Hendrix
cover, because what fun must it be to feel yourself in the shoes of The Band Of
Gypsies from time to time.

The spirit of the transformation into the band
that made Hearts On Fire is already
evident — there is a very strong emphasis on danceable funk grooves throughout
the show, most obvious on the drastic rearrangement of ʽInside Of Meʼ, where
they drop the melancholic blues and lay on the dirty funk like there was no
tomorrow. But it works much better in the raw live setting than it would work
in the polished confines of the studio. As I said, it ain't Cream — there is
never any feeling that the players are fighting a mortal combat against each
other, even Ginger seems fairly content to be just a member of the team — but
there is no fear, either, of letting their hair down and sacrificing, where
possible, precision and discipline for the sakes of gutsy excitement.

They could actually do without the Cream
covers, though: it is quite clear that both were per­formed for purely
perfunctory reasons, and that neither Mr. Snips (who omits an entire verse from
ʽSunshine Of Your Loveʼ) nor Adrian Gurvitz (who refrains from playing the last
solo on ʽWhite Roomʼ) have any real interest in playing a Bruce or a Clapton.
But I suppose that having Ginger Baker in your band surmises certain ironclad
obligations — especially when one starts thinking of all the potential ticket
buyers. Anyway, that is just six minutes out of seventy-five, and they don't
sound awful or anything.

Overall, a content thumbs up here: the whole thing is a
sweaty, crunchy, agile, and intelligent sample of mid-Seventies'
«hard-art»-rock with a respectable balance between the hard and the art parts.
Less elitist and esoteric than something like The Mahavishnu Orchestra,
perhaps, but high­ly recommendable for all those who'd like to combine
intelligence with headbanging without having to take it from the likes of Uriah
Heep.

Apparently, Robbie Robertson got tired one day
from waking up and looking out of his window to discover the rest of The Band
picketing his apartment with large signs reading «ROBBIE WE NEED MORE SONGS
FROM YOU» and «ROBBIE GRACE US WITH EVEN MORE OF YOUR EGO». In order to teach
those guys a lesson, he decided that from now on — for a short while at least,
enough to record one whole LP — The Band were no longer The Band, but would
rever­t back to The Hawks, the barroom/shithouse-playing backing band for
Ronnie Hawkins back in their early «Swinging Toronto» days. Alternatively, this
may have been a collective decision,
but who can tell now? It ain't 1973 any more, and they all lie in their
autobiographies anyway.

Cover / tribute albums were not exactly all the
rage in 1973, when the world was still young, but they were beginning to
coalesce as a separate form of art — the other well known example from the same
year is Bowie's Pin Ups — and with Moondog Matinee, The Band ended up
playing a serious part in that coalescence. Since, at any point in their
post-Basement existence, The Band could have leisurely changed their name to
The Academy, Moondog Matinee is no
exception: it finds our merry bunch of bearded musical intellectuals
«institutionalizing» the lightweight enter­tainment that they originally grew
out of. On a sheerly technical level, they succeed; on a more abstract artistic
one, they utterly fail.

At least the choice of material is exquisite.
Instead of sanctifying early garage-rock à
la Bowie (which would be silly, since The Hawks were never garage-related),
or early rockabilly, which would make them look like a British Invasion band,
or Chicago blues, which would make them into a second-rate Butterfield Blues
Band, they go for a diverse selection that does involve a bit of rockabilly,
but generally concentrates on old school soul, R&B, gospel, and New Orleans
party muzak — and very few of these songs even begin to come close to «radio
standards».

If anything, Moondog Matinee is priceless for its edutainment value. If you
squint at the credits hard enough, you might want to find out about Clarence
«Frogman» Henry and his throaty croak (which no one in The Band, shameful as it
is to say, was able to reproduce — so they just put an electronic distorted
effect on Helm's voice), or about The Platters, or about LaVern Baker — or you
just might want to shift gears and go watch The
Third Man, which is a really good movie, al­though perhaps just a tad
overrated in terms of significance and quality by today's gourmet hip­sters,
according to whom, almost everything
with Orson Welles in it automatically turns to gold... but we were actually
talking about The Band here.

To tell the truth, this is not really a «bad»
album. The Band honestly try to «Band-ify» the origi­nals — in fact, come 1973,
they were so much one with their general style already, they could not have
really gone back to their bare roots even if they wanted to — making this, at
the very least, into an intriguing modernization of the freshly dug-out
«non-classics». However, that is also the root of the problem: some of these
songs yield quite unwillingly to the «Band-ification», and some just plain
rebel and turn into uncomfortable small puddles of embarrassment.

I am talking first and foremost about the
«rock'n'roll» numbers — in one of his monologs on art philosophy in The Last Waltz, Robbie said something to
the effect of "been there, done that, could do that along with the best of
'em, got bored and moved on" about their early days playing rock­'n'roll,
and listening to these tepid, languid takes on Chuck Berry's ʽPromised Landʼ
and Fats Do­mino's ʽI'm Readyʼ (which happens to be one of my personal
favorites from the early boogie era, so I take this as a personal offense) sure
confirms that stance. Actually, the prime culprit here is not Robertson, but
the rhythm section of Helm and Danko — a clear-cut case of «overcooking it»:
not content to play simple four-fours and minimalistic, but steady boogie
lines, they give both of the tracks a «swing» attitude that completely robs
them of their basic point, because if one cannot properly headbang to these
tracks in a clear, metronomic fashion, what good are they? Complete­ly no good.
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky — if anything, Chuck Berry should be left to the care
of the Rolling Stones, and Fats... Fats can probably take good care of himself.

They do a better job with Junior Parker's /
Elvis Presley's ʽMystery Trainʼ, which gets seriously
funkified without completely losing the vibe of the original — and also turned
into a playground for Hudson, who is busy unfurling a little electronic /
proto-IDM symphony in the background while Robbie and the boys are merrily
hacking away. The weirdness of the combo alone would be suffi­cient to make it
passable; unfortunately, the groove goes on well past its welcome, be­cause
even Garth runs out of creative ideas a couple of minutes into the song.

Likewise, everything else is randomly
hit-and-miss. One upbeat tune may reach the right spot because of the proper
amount of party flavor and tongue-in-cheekiness (ʽAin't Got No Homeʼ, even
despite the lame attempt to electronically compensate for the lack of a proper
«Frogman» voice) — another one may be a shy, tentative recreation of a much
more energetic and over­whelming original (ʽSavedʼ — somebody tell these guys
to stay away from African-American parishes). One Manuel-sung ballad may be
sweet and touching (ʽShare Your Love With Meʼ), another may attempt to squeeze
his free-roaming style into a rigid waltzing doo-wop arrangement where his
attack loses focus (ʽThe Great Pretenderʼ). One side-closer may be the
completely un­expected rearrangement of the ʽThird Man Themeʼ, now a
lazy-summer-day Band-style chillout polka (no zither!), another side-closer may
be a moving, but totally expendable Sam Cooke cover (ʽA Change Is Gonna Comeʼ
is, I believe, one of those few tunes that are so personal, you'd really have
to live it out before adding it to your repertoire — no reasons to doubt
Danko's sincerity, but he is not living it out here, he is just paying a humble
tribute to Sam).

Thus, it ain't all totally without redemption,
but I would never in my life call Moondog
Matinee a «success» — certainly not if the goal here was to «update» all
the songs for the modern age, nor if the goal was somehow to prove The Band's
«authentic» status: ʽThe Weightʼ and ʽThe Night They Drove Old Dixie Downʼ
assert their authenticity and heritage far more effectively than a million
Chuck Berry and Sam Cooke covers ever could. And this is a thumbs down — still a must-own
for the serious fan, an «important trifle» in the legacy, but, nevertheless,
also an album which The Band's discography could definitely skip over.

The CD reissue adds a whole bunch of bonus
tracks from the same sessions, most of them com­pletely passable (particularly
a lame-o-licious acoustic guitar cover of Chuck Willis' ʽWhat Am I Living Forʼ,
with a subtle melody change that totally kills off the smooth flow of the
original) — including one and one only original track: the studio version of
ʽEndless Highwayʼ, which, to tell the truth, would later be done with far more
verve and energy on the joint Dylan/Band live album Before The Flood. No surprise here, though — like main course, like
bonus.

The ever more swinging years find Billy Preston
still too shy and afraid to try something that de­viates from the established
formula. He does continue to acknowledge the arrival of new trends, styles, and
fashions — covering contemporary pop hits by the dozen — but he does not dare
to sing, still limits his own songwriting to just a small handful of half-assed
instrumentals, and, most importantly, still shows little interest in playing
with a daring, competitive backing band.

In fact, most of the backing players were not
even listed in the credits here — with the exception of Sly Stone, not yet a
man of «The Family», but already a player on the scene, who is also credi­ted
for arranging most of the tracks and co-writing two of Billy's three numbers.
Curious trivia bit: ʽAdviceʼ is probably the first recorded song on which you
get to hear Sly's trademark "I wanna take you higher" bit, even if
the excitement and enthusiasm on this track is on kindergarten level compared
with later Family Stone developments. For some reason, the two artists find it funny
to interweave the riff of ʽLouie Louieʼ into the melody — in a certain sense,
ʽLouie Louieʼ does take you higher,
but I wonder if my sense is the same as theirs.

Anyway, the only real difference is that, the
farther they go, the less these organ rearrangements closely resemble and mimic
the originals — ʽSatisfactionʼ, for instance, is practically unrecogni­zable
until the brass section starts playing the main riff, at which point you
understand that Billy was actually
translating Jagger's vocals to an organ setting all along. But he really
transforms it into a loose, festive R&B number (somewhat similar to Otis
Redding's take), completely chan­ging the spirit of the Stones to something
more celebratory and less spiteful. (Which is not neces­sarily a good thing,
but a fairly common one with R&B adaptations of British Invasion tunes, so
we might just as well make our peace with the procedure).

Many of the covers are R&B standards in the
first place, though, and cannot be transformed too deeply — ʽIn The Midnight
Hourʼ, ʽI Feel Goodʼ — so, in the end, it is still more intriguing and curious
to look at Billy handle the other
stuff. If ʽSatisfactionʼ rolls along like a merry dance groove, then ʽA Hard
Day's Nightʼ, on the other hand, gets slowed down and played in almost
dirge-like fashion, which is only logical, if you ask me: this is the kind of rhythm that would be more appropriate for
someone who has just had «a hard day's night», «working like a dog». Yes, it's
sort of sad that the song loses energy, spirit, catchiness, memorability, and
every other reason to exist in the process — but nice, logical, reasonable try
anyway.

On a final note, beware of ʽFree Funkʼ: despite
the title, this is really a slow soul ballad, «freely» quoting from ʽGeorgia On
My Mindʼ and something else that I do not recognize. Not that the word «funk» had
a straight, unambiguous musical meaning in early 1966, of course, but even back
then, it would probably be associated with something carnal and sexy rather
than a slow moving, spiritually-oriented soul groove. Maybe the record people
accidentally switched the title with ʽIt's Got To Happenʼ — since both are
original non-hit compositions, who would be giving a damn anyway?

Overall, if you only want to have one album of Billy Preston
instrumentals, this might just as well be it, or just about any other one would
do (I would still lean towards 16 Yr.
Old Soul — back then, at least, this formula was still fresh and far away
from being run into the ground). A year later, Billy would follow it with Club Meeting, another similar
«experiment» that hardly merits its own review (the two LPs have been reissued
on a single CD in recent years), except for a brief mention that it does have a
few vocal parts, the first real Billy Preston singing on a Billy Preston album.
He also does ʽSunnyʼ and ʽSummertimeʼ. (I bet you're already as thrilled as I
am).

It is a little sad, actually, that in the end,
Billy had to spend most of the century's greatest musical decade in such a
state of skepticism over his own abilities — the years to come would prove that
he had much more to offer the world than credible, mildly imaginative organ
reworkings of other people's ideas. Who knows, maybe if he had spent those
«magic years» honing his individuality and creativity in more aspects than one,
he could have grown into a major star of the business. Then again, idle
speculation on the subject is none of our
business, either. Simple fact is — early Billy Preston is best enjoyed in a
minimal dosage. One LP only, or, better still, a self-made com­pilation.
Preferably without ʽGoldfingerʼ on it.

Two
Great Guitars might have been
an oddity, but at least it left a stronger impression than Bo's regular studio
albums from the same era. This one belongs in about the same class as Bo Diddley & Company — as solidly
masterminded and produced as anything the man could knock off in his sleep. But
with the musical world growing more and more demanding by early 1965, and slow­ly
awakening to the idea that «progress» could and should not only come
«naturally», but could also be permanently stimulated, the idea of making a
1965 record that sounded so firmly like 1957 was getting colder and colder by
the minute. This one didn't sell at all, and I don't blame anyone — were I
alive and buying LPs in 1965, I probably wouldn't buy it either.

The only track here that suggests a certain
awareness of one's surroundings is ʽLondon Stompʼ, a dance-blues number that
crudely parodies a bunch of English accents, all based on Bo's recent
experiences in the trans-Atlantic cradle of the English language. Just a novelty
number, but one well worth a listen — after all, surely all that tolerance
towards the legions of white British boys imitating the walks and talks of
grizzled black bluesmen entitles us to hearing the grizzled black bluesman
returning the favor. Then again, a parody is only a parody, however funny it
may be (and this one ain't particularly
funny).

Everything else is just standard Bo fare. The
title track is no Hank Williams cover, but simply another pomp-and-stomp
opening number to exploit the Diddley beat, even if it opens with a couple of
deceptive licks that Bo might have learned from the Chuck Berry sessions — then
in­tegrates them into the old beat to the point of disintegration. ʽI Wonder
Why People Don't Like Meʼ is a decent Motown stylization — and the lyrics, with
their tongue-in-cheek rags-to-riches story, might actually be a subtle jab at
the typical «Motown star» of the time (especially appro­priate for Bo, who was
struggling for survival at the time and must have been fairly envious of all
the young, smooth, soulful whippersnappers like Marvin Gaye).

The rest? For the most part, just variations
upon variations, with semi-catchy recycled vocal grooves at best and no
particularly curious guitar parts whatsoever. The best Bo Diddley song of the epoch
was not even included on the original LP for some reason — this is the grim,
parent-scaring ʽMama, Keep Your Big Mouth Shutʼ, in which the man gallantly
asks the matron of the family to refrain from interfering in his romantic
relations with her daughter. (And the guy was worrying about why nobody was
buying his records!). It does seem to
crop up on some editions, though, so do try to hear Hey! Good Lookin' in its company — the only way to ensure that Bo
actually did have some bite left in
late '64 / early '65.

Oh yes, ʽMummy Walkʼ is rather amusing as well
("hey little girl, I mean a-you in yellow, I don't wanna see you do the
mummy walk with the other fellow" is one of the classic lines of the
pre-Patti Smith era, in any case). But on the other hand, you should also
suspect that something is wrong when two songs in a row are called ʽLa La Laʼ
and "Yeah Yeah Yeahʼ; and when you ac­tually hear them, you will most
likely go from suspicion to somewhere else, much less pleasant. Overall, a thumbs down
— lack of diversity or originality is one thing, but simply remaking your own
history, going round and round in circles, is another thing. An annoying thing.

Nothing lasts forever, and few things last
shorter than the fruitful periods of modern rock bands. Two years earlier, Band
Of Horses seemed to settle into a comfortable pattern of writing not par­ticularly
original, but quite seemingly beautiful music. With Mirage Rock, they almost seem bent on proving to us that they do
not want to conform to patterns — and in order to do that, they are willing to
sacrifice beauty, depth, and quality for the sake of change.

First things first: if you have a sound rooted
in the roots, is it that necessary to
choose a moment for placing production duties in the hands of the man who
produced The Eagles? Glyn Johns does have an impressive, but a very uneven,
pedigree: this is also the man, after all, who went on from producing Who's Next to producing It's Hard, meaning a total lack of
guarantee. I have no idea if it is Johns' presence that determines the transition
from the fairly sophisticated sound layers of Infinite Arms to the much more sparse and simple arrangements on Mirage Rock — I suppose that Bridwell
must have wanted this shift in
approach — but it is Johns' presence
that orchestrates the whole deal, and the deal sure goes wrong.

Apparently, most of the album was recorded
«live in the studio», with lots of re­hearsals required before the final takes.
Since none of the band members are really seasoned, notorious musicians,
clearly more energy must have been spent on «getting it all to work» rather
than on concentrating on the melody and texture side. Result? Mirage Rock sounds about as impressive
and memorable as anything done by the kids in your local art college band (just
enter your ZIP code to get the name) — maybe worth relaxing to while having a
beer or two after a hard day's work on a cold winter evening, then moving on
forever.

Nothing illustrates this point better than
ʽKnock Knockʼ, the lead-in track and the first single re­leased from the album.
If there is only one classic example allowed of «impotence in music», this here
is a great fine candidate — the song opens up ringing, banging, and
whoo-whooing in an­them mode, and then you spend four minutes looking for
release without getting it. Verse number one... bridge... verse number two...
bridge... where's the frickin' chorus? Wait, what do you mean that was the chorus? That was just the
bridge, wasn't it? You mean I'm supposed to sing along to "knockin' on the
door, knockin' on the door, knockin' on the door" as the highest climactic
point of the anthem? Can you imagine — oh, I don't know — a ʽDead End Streetʼ
that goes straight back to the verse melody after "we are strictly second
class, and we can't understand"? And this
song doesn't even have that sort of verse melody.

Most of the rest is equally disenchanting. All
sorts of by-the-book midtempo pop / country-rock grooves that barely ever rise
above the ground, and float out of memory as soon as they are over (quite
often, even way before they are
over). Everything is superficially melodic, soft, warm, ne­ver overproduced,
never irritating, but there is nothing in the world that would compel me to go
back to these songs after I have patiently endured the record four times from
top to bottom, and never even once did it manage to hit a nerve that wasn't
already worn down to insensitivity by way, way too many hits in the past. So to
speak.

Poking half-blindly at the titles, ʽA Little
Biblicalʼ is not even the tiniest bit biblical, but it is al­most a good, upbeat, well-rounded power pop number — maybe The
Alan Parsons Project could have emphasized its stronger sides and polished it
to the state of one of their unforgettable ditties such as ʽSooner Or Laterʼ
(particularly if they'd found a less ordinary vocalist than Bridwell).
ʽDumbster Worldʼ stylishly toys with Neil Young-style folk-rock gloominess, but
then crashes into Garbage Planet when the mid-section starts «rocking out» in
generic alt-rock fashion. And that's about all there is, really. By the way,
quiet country stuff like ʽLong Vowsʼ does
sound like the early Eagles, and even though I am not a mortal enemy of the
early Eagles, what use do I have for a 21st century imitation of the early
Eagles?..

One thing that does indirectly confirm that
Glyn Johns was indeed chiefly responsible for this failure is the bonus EP on
the deluxe edition, called Sonic Ranch
Sessions: this was apparently re­corded by the band without Johns'
participation, and the five tracks on the EP are much more re­markable than the
album itself. For instance, ʽReilly's Dreamʼ is pinned to a hallucinatory
oscilla­ting guitar line, turning it into homely dream-pop; ʽCatalinaʼ is saved
from immediate death by some amusing experiments with Beatlesque vocal
modulations; and ʽBockʼ has a better melan­cholic mix of piano, organ, guitar,
and vocals than any other track on the whole package. This is a highly
subjective feeling — it's not like we're talking heaven-and-earth scales here
anyway — but it did come from somewhere, so I'm noting it just in case. But
bonus tracks are bonus tracks, and the album per se gets an assured thumbs down
— if you can't do better than the
Eagles, why not just turn into an Eagles tribute band? More honest that way.

If the name of the band is «The Auteurs», and
the name of the band's debut album is New
Wave, it would be only logical if the first song title were ʽAnna Karinaʼ.
As strongly as I have to congra­tulate myself for coming close to the truth (since one of the songs on the band's second
album is actually titled ʽNew French Girlfriendʼ), all of these trappings —
including the fuck-this-world black-and-white imagery on the band's early
photos — only suggest a pool of reverence for the intellec­tual rebel attitude
of early Sixties' Europe; the music, however, generally scoops up ins­piration
from completely different waterbasins.

The Auteurs were really little more than a
pretext for Luke Haines — the man behind, before, in the middle of, and all
around the band — to adorn himself with a cool moniker. The rest of the band
consisted of bass player Alice Readman, since she already was Luke's girlfriend
anyway; a rotating set of not particularly outstanding drummers (Glen Collins
on this particular record); and James Banbury as the band's resident cellist —
probably the only distinctive element of The Au­teurs' sound and style that is
not Luke Haines. That said, he does not play on every track, and the cello
always stays in the background: first time I listened to New Wave in a somewhat distracted state, I did not even notice that some of the songs had a
cello padding to them.

With these details out of the way, let us talk
about the early, barely-post-pre-pubescent years of Luke Haines as bandleader,
songwriter, arranger, musician, and spiritual vessel (setting aside the tacky
issue of Luke Haines as a human being, commonly reported to be rather juicy,
but should not really concern all of us who strive for civility).

Every once in a while, The Auteurs are repor­ted
as one of the first, if not the first
band to symbolize «Britpop», preceding by a very brief mar­gin all of those
people like Blur, Oasis, etc. — a rather confusing pigeonholing, actually,
because (a) «Britpop» itself is an awful word in its current usage (if The
Kinks weren't the first real Brit­pop
band, then who the heck was?..); (b) The Auteurs sound nothing like either Blur
or Oasis; (c) The Auteurs do not, in
fact, sound tremen­dously «British» at all — neither does Haines sport a
particularly «trademark British» singing ac­cent, nor are the lyrical subject
matters particularly UK-related, and what else is there for the mu­sic to qualify
as «Britpop»? A heavy Gilbert & Sullivan influence?..

In reality, the very name of «The Auteurs»
surmises that Luke Haines would like, if at all pos­sible, to avoid
pigeonholing. He is simply a singer-songwriter who happened to see it fit, at
the time, to indulge his singer-songwriting impulses in a «rock band» format,
no more, no less. Mu­sic-wise, he is not a particularly pretentious or
ambitious singer-songwriter, seeking for direct self-expression rather than for
new and surprising formats. His melodic gift is obvious, but not tremendous,
and quite conventionally realized: The Kinks may have been just as much of an
influ­ence here as Love, or R.E.M., or any band, American, British, or
world-wide, that could grow its own identity out of a fairly «normal»
understanding of melody in folk, pop, and rock'n'roll tradi­tions. Nothing
particularly eyebrow-raising here, unless you think that regular use of melodic
cello overdubs in pop-rock songs was a particular stunner for 1993 (and why
should it be, when Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne were merrily engaging in it
twenty-five years earlier?). Nor does New
Wave flash around in an eye-attracting retro parade: Haines goes just as
easy on hea­vily distorted, lo-fi grunge / alt-rock guitars as he does on the
acoustic strum or on the «colorful»
electric pop-rock tones — New
Wave is quite clearly a product of the post-Nirvana world, de­spite its
allegiance to the pre-Nirvana one.

The old and new schools go for a merry merge
already on the first song — ʽShowgirlʼ combines a dreamy, ethereal vocal part,
almost straight off some obscure psychedelic nugget from the late 1960s, with a
simple, feedback-drenched guitar buzz in the chorus that was all the rage in
1993. The trick worked, though: once they'd released this melancholic,
self-deprecating tale of a guy disillusioned in being married to a showgirl, it
effectively clicked with the critics and eventually led to a se­rious recording
contract. And how does it sound today? Well... it isn't particularly awe­some,
but you do get to take a bit of a liking to Haines' artistic persona, and
supposedly, that is all that's really required of the first song. Because «a
bit of a liking» is quite likely to grow into a se­rious attraction, over time.

The «liking» that I'm talking about is hardly a
kind of «I really like this guy» liking, though; it's more of a «I really like
how this guy is manipulating my attention» liking. Luke Haines is a semi-decent
rock lyricist, deftly hiding his childhood traumas and adolescent
disillusionment under metaphors, allegories, and impressionistic chaff so thick
that very quickly, you lose all hopes or wishes to decipher the message — you have
to simply remain contented with the fact that he is smart, ironic, and romantic, while you, most likely, are dumb, straightforward, and deadly dull.

More importantly, he can also come up with some
fine vocal hooks and occasionally resonant pop guitar riffs — such as the
nagging dental drill driving ʽIdiot Brotherʼ, or the mean little pissed-off
chord sequence at the end of each chorus to ʽEarly Yearsʼ. None of these riffs
will pro­bably ever make it to the Great Textbook, but over the course of the
record, they support each other in building a coherent impression: there is really
not a single «useless» song on the album, each offers at least a little
something to add to the general pool of depression, hatred, disenchant­ment,
disillusionment, self-deprecation, social anguish, explicit and implicit
envy...

...you'd think I'd be talking Alice In Chains
here or something, but probably the one big advan­tage of Luke Haines is that
he is expressing all that stuff without
having to resort to clichés — such as brutal heavy riffs, jarring power chords,
or hateful screaming at the top of one's lungs. Instead, he does it all through
hushed, dreamy vocal hooks: lines like "bailed out, this skin is shed /
bailed out, this thing is dead" or "downtown, you're burning down /
I'm sick of parking cars" are delivered almost lovingly, the way others
would sing of a love interest lost or found.

If forced to choose one song, I'd probably go
along with ʽStarstruckʼ, whose lyrics cleverly walk the line between the two
different meanings of the word — maybe for no other reason simply than the way
he articulates the phrase "I was always starstruck" that resolves the
verse-chorus build-up. Idealism and cynicism are attitudes that are pretty hard
to combine within the confines of a single vessel — like matter and
anti-matter, you'd expect them to cancel out each other, but Haines has the
skill it takes to override the laws of the universe: this and many of the other
songs are delivered from the perspective of somebody who obviously believes in
something grander, yet hardly ever admits that it is reachable.

Overall, running slightly ahead of the events
to come, I find New Wave to be The
Auteurs' finest moment — Luke Haines' image and style is already fully fleshed
out, the individual songs are all written at the top of his abilities, and the balance
between the Sixties, the Eighties, and the Nine­ties in the arrangements and
atmospheres is dang near perfect. And yes, the album is anything but flashy,
and quite prone to disappearing in the cracks of the floorboards of time, so
all the more reason to join me in a big juicy thumbs up here.

Still with Atlantic, but with some major
changes in personnel: (a) this is the band's first record with­out Gurewitz,
who left for a variety of reasons (he himself quoted the need to concentrate on
managerial work at Epitaph Records, whereas Graffin would hint at increased
drug use); (b) this is their first — and only — record produced by none other
than Ric Ocasek of The Cars. Both of these factors could finally hint at a
fresh change in the overall sound, for better or for worse. And? Take a
guess?...

...you are absolutely correct, The Gray Race sounds exactly like Stranger Than Fiction. New guitarist Brian Baker, formerly of
Samhain, Government Issue, Junkyard, Minor Threat, The Meat­men, Dag Nasty,
Doggy Style, and probably a host of other hardcore outfits that only the most
hardcore fans have heard about, is not seriously distinguishable from Brett;
and as for the production, unless Ocasek saddled this band with synthesizers —
which was probably out of the question — would have to remain the same anyway.

So, here is another set of mostly
interchangeable and rather generic «melodic hardcore» from the world's leading
combo of human rights activists who happen to like speed, distortion, rock
poetry, and moralizing at the same time. At this point, their mid-tempo stuff
is already close to unbea­rable — I have no business listening to metronomic
crap like 'The Streets Of Americaʼ, no matter how anthemic Graffin always makes
it sound; and, unfortunately, quite a few of the fast songs start sounding just
as boring and clichéd as the slow ones — ʽDrunk Sincerityʼ, for instance, just
seems like they threw on an extra drum part as an afterthought.

The lead singles were ʽA Walkʼ, which is not a
bad song (at least there is a nice, tense buildup from verse to chorus, as the
rising bassline takes your spirit higher); and ʽPunk Rock Songʼ, which is just
too clean, poppy, and politically correct to merit the title — yes, it is a
punk rock song in general form and structure, but there is nothing in the world
to justify it as an exemplary punk rock
song, which it isn't, and re-recording it in German (this extra version is
appended as a bonus track) does not help much to elevate its status.

Since, other than ʽA Walkʼ, there is not a
single song here that commands my attention (not even the title track this time
can boast a strong hook), this is the first Bad Religion album since Into The Unknown that demands a
certified thumbs
down. As long as the verve and inspiration were there somehow, I could respect the style
enough to acknowledge its existence. But with Gray Race, Bad Religion seem to finally cross that line — for me,
at least — where «respectfully tole­rable» finally morphs into «unbearably
dull». For other people, that line might have come signi­ficantly earlier, or
somewhat later, but it is clear that somewhere, somehow one simply has to draw that line. My tired buck,
sick of recycled punk riffs and idealistic sentiments rekindled like burnt out
matches, sort of stops here. And I am sure that this has even nothing to do
with the de­parture of Gurewitz. It's just a question of time.

Now who was it ordered a change in style? They
had such a lovely thing going on, and without a single warning, in just one
year's time, they went from a smooth synthesis of jazz, prog, and roots stuff
to a disheartening brand of heavy funk, bordering on disco (and sometimes
crossing over directly — on ʽDancing The Night Awayʼ, which, alas, is anything but a throwback to Cream's ʽDance The
Night Awayʼ, even though Ginger at least must have felt a slight discomfort). I'd
like to place this burden on the conscience of Mr. Snips (because what the hell
of a name is Mr. Snips, anyway?), but apparently, he is only credited for two
of these songs, so what we are really
deal­ing with is nothing less than a shameless sellout by the Gurvitzes — and
Ginger playing submis­sive accomplice.

Not that these songs are all that awful. The
Gurvitzes' songwriting instincts were honed well enough by the first two albums
to produce a set of decent riffs, shuffle in some variety and play around with
guitar tones and overdubs. It's just that ʽHearts On Fireʼ, with its macho
stomp and electronically treated guitar solos, rather belongs on a Peter
Frampton album. These guys did not
really have enough brawn to «sex it up» — Mr. Snips, as a vocalist, lacked
personality or power, and the riffage was too clean anyway to inspire the
expected dirty thoughts.

There is one interesting composition here:
ʽNeon Lightsʼ, despite the misleading title, is actually a tight, swinging
blues-rocker with a subtle, cool-oriented chorus and a weird selection of
guitar tones — hard to describe, but it seems to generate a gloomy forcefield all
its own, with a wobbly psychedelic aura, not terribly original, but standing
out a bit. Everything else is simply «listen­able» and even «memorable» after a
few listens, but you'd have to have those few listens first, and why should
you, when there were probably about five thousand albums released all over the
world that year, covering the same grounds?

The band even stoops to including a generic
12-bar piece, dressed in a «blues-de-luxe»
treat­ment (ʽThirsty For The Bluesʼ) — to my ears, even more of a
lowlight on this album than the cheesy disco stuff: Adrian Gurvitz is no B. B.
King, and neither is Mr. Snips, and the worst they could do was drag down the
tempo so that, for over five minutes, we'd have to slowly savour each bar, de­livered
in pseudo-vintage fashion (and wasting Ginger's presence — this man has no
business whatsoever doing generic blues material).

Granted, ʽThirsty For The Bluesʼ may simply
have been a chunk of filler that they came up with at the last moment, with
ideas running low and contractual obligations pressing closer. But the truth is
that I really cannot recommend any other tracks — ʽNeon Lightsʼ is okay, and
«funk-rock» collections may probably benefit from ʽHearts On Fireʼ and ʽFlying
In And Out Of Star­domʼ (the latter is at least fast and furious, if only they
had a better singer), yet even these are only impressive while they last.

Consequently, here is just another of the many
examples of decent bands eaten up by the com­mer­cial bug — since Elysian Encounter did not cut it with
the crowds (it hardly had a chance anyway, with progressive rock already drifting
out of mainstream fashion by 1975), they tried to go the Physical Graffiti-era Led Zep route here with a foray into
accessible, danceable hard-rock and predictably fell flat on their faces. The
only honorable decision after that would be to commit seppuku, and that they
did, disbanding once and for all. Which is a pity: had they been able to remain
satisfied with what little they had, and develop it further, we might have seen
many inte­resting developments that could organically grow out of the Elysian Encounter stylistics. As it is,
they just cruelly aborted the baby, and for that, they get a merciless thumbs down
from me — even though, on my third listen, having overcome the initial
disappointment, I could already sto­mach most of these songs with good old
toe-tapping indifference. But is that enough for a change of heart? And
speaking of hearts, an extra -100 for the album title. I cannot exclude that
Mr. Snips' heart was indeed on fire during these sessions (you'd have to be a
professional cardiologist to reach a proper diagnosis), but I am more
interested in Mr. Ginger, and this just isn't the sort of music that he was
born to play.

Not everybody in the world would have easily
dared to slap a title like Rock Of Ages
onto a live album, not even a double one. Pompous double (and triple) live
albums were all the rage in the early 1970s, of course, but The Band still
managed to stand out — releasing a concert record that could easily compete
with the average prog live album in pretentiousness, without being in the least
saddled by «prog» trappings (probably not counting Garth Hudson's solo
spotlight, but we'll get to that soon enough).

Whoever saw The Last Waltz — and we will get around to that, too, eventually —
could hardly walk away from it untouched by The Band's aura of self-importance
(be it «awestruck» or «irri­tated», no matter), but would probably remain
somewhat uncertain as to how much of that self-importance was immanent and how
much of it was conjured by Scorsese's direction: after all, the master is quite
famous for being able to perceive Biblical solemnity in whatever object he has
chosen to idolize this morning. One listen to Rock Of Ages will put that uncertainty to rest: no Scorsese
anywhere in sight, but the not-so-bad boys of Rustic'n'Roll are every bit as
manipulative with their majesty here as they would be at their final show. Or,
for that matter, any time, any day, as long as there were more than two of them
assembled in any one place.

Recorded on the last days of December in New
York City, at a venue (hardly coincidentally) cal­led «Academy of Music», culminating
in a Bob Dylan cameo (which was actually left off the original album, but
faithfully waited in the archives until the remastered CD reissue), this is a
to­tally huge show, with about 75% of The Band's material from their first
three, «already classic» albums interspersed with a lonely ʽLife Is A Carnivalʼ
off Cahoots and a few R&B covers
here and there to provide the Impressive Link With The Past. The Bob cameo
actually took place in the early morning hours of January 1, 1972, and on this
new, expanded reissue finds its rightful place as the «climax» of the show. I
mean, what with the humble servants working their asses off for two hours, it
could be expected of The Prophet to come out at the end and provide one final
blessing. He provided four.

In addition to all the grandness, Allen
Toussaint himself, fresh from working on ʽLife Is A Carni­valʼ, had been
recruited for writing extra horn arrangements, and a five-piece brass band is
aug­menting The Band here on many of (fortunately, not all) the numbers.
Contrary to expectations, this does not provide the music with an authentic New
Orleanian flavor, but it does add extra «beef» to the sound (and extra tragic
hero flavor to ʽThe Night They Drove Old Dixie Downʼ), and this here is a show
that needs as much beef as it can swallow without chewing.

The songs themselves, actually, are generally
played quite close to the way they were originally recorded, because, to quote
[an imaginary] Robbie Robertson, «why tamper with [my] per­fec­tion?» Apart
from the extra brass parts, an occasional extra electronic gimmick from Garth,
and a few flubbed notes from the vocalists here and there (very few, actually, compared to the usual leeway allowed themselves
by most rock performers — these guys were tremendously discip­lined onstage,
which many people are tempted to interpret as «boring»), the music is
faithfully transposed into a live environment. If there is anything here that
overwhelms, it is simply the rea­lization of how many goddamn great songs they
had on these three albums — not a single stinker out here, just wave upon wave of
greatness.

The bookmarks — that is where they fall short. Neither
Marvin Gaye's ʽDon't Do Itʼ which opens the main part of the show, nor Chuck
Willis' ʽHang Up My Rock'n'Roll Shoesʼ that closes it, really stand comparison
with The Band's own songs. Not because they aren't fine old respectable R&B
numbers — they are — but the idea here is to somehow ensure this link between
the old and the new, to build a bridge between the old Hawks, still crediting
the reverend masters, and the new Band, the masters of today. It doesn't work.
ʽDon't Do Itʼ does set a groove, but the band almost seems to be afraid to
truly «get into it», and as for Chuck Willis' number, well, it does look like
they may not want to, but they pretty much hung up those rock'n'roll shoes for
good, because this here ain't rock'n'roll, really, it's bland, generic pub
boogie, and no amount of Allen Toussaint's brasswork on top is able to
transform it into the «celebration» that it is supposed to be. In a way, these
two numbers predict the terrible failure to come of Moondog Matinee — and the questionable excesses of The Last Waltz, of course.

What works much
better is when it goes the other way — into the depths of pretentiousness, with
Hudson showing off his «J. S. Bach Discovers The Power Of Electricity» routine
on ʽThe Gene­tic Methodʼ, a lengthy organ instrumental that grew out of the
original keyboard introduction to ʽChest Feverʼ. It is gimmicky, although
certainly not as «flashy» as stuff that Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman or even
Jon Lord would be doing at the time — sort of a half «mock-baroque», half
«tongue-in-cheek-gothic» improvisation that shows who was really the boss (Hudson was the only one of them all with the
proper academic training), and just as you start thinking that you have just
about had enough, the clock strikes twelve (maybe) and Garth launches into
ʽAuld Lang Syneʼ and the audience goes whoooh. A touching moment, really, and
much more exciting than their lame, half-hearted attempts to «rock out». Leave
ʽDon't Do Itʼ to its original master, boys — or, at least, to the likes of The Who,
because there is no way you can
unlock its ass-kicking po­tential. This is not the way.

The Dylan guestspot on the bonus section of the
CD is indeed a nice conclusion, but a bit super­fluous if you already know Before The Flood — recorded two years later,
but setting more or less the same groove and with Bob in the same top-notch
«shouting» form. The song selection that they do is rather curious, though,
with two of the four numbers taken from The
Basement Tapes (still not released officially at the time) — Bob is clearly
being modest here, concentrating on stuff they wrote and made together, rather
than turning The Band back into his backing outfit. But then, yeah, they're
still on stage for the fans, so they can't help doing ʽLike A Rolling Stoneʼ
anyway. Good version, but not too necessary.

Overall, yeah, Rock Of Ages — The Band pull no punches as they prepare themselves
and their legacy for immortality. The album is more «important» as a memory of
an event, a collection of terrific songs, a self-aggrandizing eulogy, than as
something you will want to listen to over and over instead of the studio
originals. Yet it does get a thumbs up, like any live album with a great
setlist, plenty of verve, inspiration, and professionalism. The Band might not
have had a lot of ideas about how to present their material on stage in a new
light (the brass arrangements are a de­batable touch), but they certainly
showed us all how much they loved their own material on that stage. And I don't
mind — they may be narcissistic about their songs, but as long as these are
great songs, it is a pleasure to witness them get so orgiastic about them. On The Last Waltz, the egos may have been
getting too out of hand — on Rock Of
Ages, they are flaunted just about right.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

1) You've Lost That Lovin'
Feelin'; 2) Eight Days A Week; 3) Downtown; 4) Goldfinger; 5) My Girl; 6) Go Now;
7) Ferry Across The Mersey; 8) Shotgun; 9) Stop! In The Name Of Love; 10) King
Of The Road; 11) The Birds And The Bees; 12) Can't You Hear My Heartbeat.

Not much to say here: as far as I can tell,
most or all of these songs were recorded during the same session that yielded Exciting Organ, so this is a same-style
companion album that is often called a «compilation» — a strange definition,
considering that only a few of these titles seem to have been released as
singles. In any case, it was an
original Vee-Jay LP, re-released on CD thirty years later, and it functions as
part of Billy's legacy, so here you are.

The «hits», of course, are not Billy's, but
other people's — he runs a relatively short gamut here, mostly contemporary
Motown material (ʽMy Girlʼ; Junior Walker's ʽShotgunʼ, etc.), interspersed with
a few oddities, such as a Beatles cover and the latest Bond song. Since Billy's
own composi­tions are rather slack as far as thematic hooks are concerned, this
is not a big problem, and in terms of capturing the «spirits» of the originals,
he consistently does a very good job — that or­gan captures everything, be it
the warm romance of Smokey Robinson, the classy seductiveness of Diana Ross, or
the desperate praying of Denny Laine.

Even ʽEight Days A Weekʼ works a fine charm —
in subtle ways, finer than the original, since Billy, being careful to preserve
each vocal note, embellishes them with quirky little flourishes on the sides,
coming out with something more complex and less predictable than Lennon / Mc­Cart­ney's
original creation (which was great, but lacked development — once you had your
verse, chorus, and middle-eight, the rest of the song was exactly the same; for
Billy, a bare transposition to organ would have been too boring).

The biggest problem is with the choice of
material — about half of these songs weren't too great in the first place (I
mean, ʽThe Birds And The Bees?ʼ, really?), and I don't quite manage to see the
«fun» in producing all these arrangements. Maybe an entire record's worth of
Beatles covers (they did have enough popular hits by late 1964 to stuff a
12-song LP, didn't they?) could have been a better idea: in any case, ʽEight
Days A Weekʼ sitting next to ʽGoldfingerʼ does give a fair­ly accurate snapshot
of the era, which wasn't exactly overpopulated
with pop-rock masterpie­ces, but doesn't function so well by way of general
enjoyment. (Unless you really dig
Hammond or­gan encoding of Dame Shirley Bassey's acoustics).

More of an historical curiosity here than an
actual good album — but a terrific historical curiosity all the same. This was
the first of several «star power» projects that Chess Records briefly toyed
with in the Sixties, before realizing their commercial uselessness: getting Bo
Diddley and Chuck Berry to play on
the same record. Recorded in March 1964 at Tel Mar Studios, released later that
year, the album is never remembered as a particular highlight for any of those
guys; however, in some ways it is a rather unique artefact of the era. Even if
you find it horrible, you won't ever for­get how you found it horrible, that is for sure.

The original LP consisted of just four tracks:
two short instrumentals, each provided by one of the two guitar heroes in their
own trademark styles, and two long ones, symmetrically titled ʽChuck's Beatʼ
and ʽBo's Beatʼ (since the latter is four minutes longer than the former, I
used that as a feeble, but valid pretext to review the album under the Bo
Diddley section). The long ones are fairly accurate with their titles —
although both guitarists are quite active on both of them, tra­ding solos
between each other in a friendly competition, ʽChuck's Beatʼ has Bo «guesting»
on a Chuck-led recording, set to the beat of ʽMemphis Tennesseeʼ, and ʽBo's
Beatʼ sees Chuck retur­ning the favor and trying to adapt his style to a
typical Diddley beat number.

Both of the long jams sort of settle the
long-standing debate of who was there first with a pop number running over ten
minutes — Love, with their ʽRevelationʼ, or the Rolling Stones, with their ʽGo­in'
Homeʼ. Two years prior to that, here we have two already-veteran rockers,
licking each other first for ten, then for fourteen minutes in a row — and
their record company being perfectly hap­py to release the results
commercially, in an age of two-minute pop songs.

The very fact is fasci­nating, even if the jams
themselves are nothing to write home about: twenty-four minutes of Bo and Chuck
emptying their bags of tricks, most of which we have already known for about
five years. There might not have been even a single newly invented chord
sequence over all this endless jamming and soloing. The whole experience makes
it very easy to understand why, in their everyday life, these guys preferred to
stick to short outbursts rather than lengthy jam pieces. Nevertheless, the
experience is perversely fascinating — seeing them stretch out so bravely in
those early, pre-jam band times. And it's kinda funny to try and imagine the
stuff played out in their heads, too. Like when, at 7:24 into ʽChuck's Beatʼ,
Berry breaks into his «goose-quacking» solo mode, and then... «oh shit, ain't
that the third time already?.. better
drop this, quickly, before they take notice...» Then, twenty-five seconds later:
«Aw heck, I can't play anything else anyway, so why bother looking? A solo is a
solo». And he restarts the goose-quack mode again, fourth time over.

In «compact» mode, the instrumentals make more
sense: ʽLiverpool Driveʼ, with its three mi­nutes, is just the right size for
Chuck to deliver a short and sweet set of riffs and solos, and Bo's take on
ʽWhen The Saints Go Marching Inʼ is a fine sample of «diddlifying» the classic
New Orleanian atmosphere — putting the tribal beat back where it was originated.
On the other hand, they lack the novelty factor of the jams: neither of the two
is likely to ever take the place of ʽLittle Quee­nieʼ or ʽDiddley Daddyʼ in
anyone's hearts, whereas the jams — these jams you will definitely be
remembering years from now on, at least on a purely factual basis.

The CD release of the album threw on a few
bonus tracks, probably released during the same ses­sion, and, judged on their
own, they might actually be the best there is: ʽFireballʼ, as behooves any song
called ʽFireballʼ (see Deep Purple), is fast and tense, based on a speedy
boogie pickin' pattern, probably copped from the likes of Big Bill Broonzy; and
ʽStinkeyʼ experiments with pha­sing a bit, creating a lively noisy environment
against which sharper, more focused licks are played — the result is a great
swampy feel, with well-bred, goal-oriented bullfrogs croaking out of the
generally mucky, oozy depths.

Overall, a strange project indeed, but one that
adds a somewhat interesting page in both histories of the «two great guitars».
Supposedly, any prominent people in the jazz world, listening to this stuff
back for some random reason back in 1964, would have scoffed at the poorness of
the tech­niques and sparseness of ideas. They would be absolutely right, too.
But everybody has to have a start somewhere — so, in a way, these simplistic
sessions were paving the road to all the great achievements of rock-oriented jam
bands, some of which were only a couple of years away from these humble
beginnings. So, sort of a thumbs up for historical importance and general
weird­ness, but otherwise, only recommended for hardcore rockabilly collectors.

Two fully formed LPs over the course of one
year might be a bit too much even for a wonderboy of Andrew Bird's caliber, so
do not expect any big deals from Hands
Of Glory, which is basi­cally just a little pony companion to the big white
steed of Break It Yourself. It is
sparse, mini­malistically produced, very much country-oriented, not entirely
self-written, with a subset of co­vers ranging from traditional folk to Townes
Van Zandt — definitely not an attempt
to win over a new bunch of fans, rather just a small extra Thanksgiving gift
for the old ones.

Other than this humble statement of fact, I am not
even sure what to say. The textures, moods, vocals, instrumental techniques,
everything here has already been commented upon in preceding reviews. The
people at Pitchfork tried choosing a general «apocalyptic» angle, indicating that
many, if not most, of these songs deal with visions of the end of the world,
destruction, redemp­tion, and resurrection, but with Andrew Bird, these themes
are actually always on the edge of
the knife — his trademark fin-du-siècle
melancholy has always been that of a morose guy with a fiddle, sitting on the
ravine's edge, waiting for the shit to hit the fan once he finally plays his
last note and puts down the instrument. Who cares if now, on a couple of songs,
he is adding some words on the same
subject to the music? The effect is still the same.

In a way, it almost looks like the first seven
songs have all been assembled here just to provide a «conventional» intro to
the album's longest, and only «experimental» number — ʽBeyond The Valley Of The
Three White Horsesʼ, with a «looped» reference to the album's opening number, throws
on some majorly stoned psychedelic thrills, starting off as a completely
innocent ins­trumental shuffle, then gradually burrowing its way into a
whirly-wobbly tunnel of sound as the violin backgrounds are phased, inverted,
mortified, and sucked out into space. The effect can be donwright
hallucinogenic in a proper context — problem is, in an unproper context, it can
be se­verely irritating instead, and who knows which context you will be hearing it in? For every per­son
for whom this «works», there will be another one who will accuse Andrew Bird of
«Going Gaga à la Björk», and the
world will not have come one step closer to peace and love for all.

Still, the seven «normal» songs, including a
scaled-down remake of ʽOrpheo Looks Backʼ from the previous album; a
semi-hilarious, semi-sad cover of the traditional country tune ʽRailroad Billʼ
that might have been an outtake from Oh!
The Grandeur for all I care; and an ominous feedback-meets-fiddle take on
The Handsome Family's ʽWhen That Helicopter Comesʼ — these all constitute very
pleasant, traditional, entertaining listening for those who dig roots-rock in
ge­neral and/or Bird's personal take on it in particular. There is enough professionalism,
intelligence, tact, and modest catchiness to even warrant the usual thumbs up.
It just happens to be a some­what disinterested thumbs up.

(Besides, it seems that, try as he might,
Andrew just won't be able to get the guitar out of business as pop music's
leading instrument — somehow, it seems easier to keep on writing interesting
guitar-based pop songs than violin-based ones. Maybe the problem is in that
these songs aren't really based on
the violin — it's fairly hard to get it to serve as a stable rhythmic
foundation for this kind of music — and end up being just a collection of
delicate lead lines hanging out of nowhere and fading back into nowhere, which
doesn't exactly work well for the memorability department. But never mind, just
a spontaneous speculation on my part here, really).